Baked goods such as brownies, cakes, cookies, and muffins are popular consumer snack food and dessert food items. A wide variety of recipes are currently available for use by consumers to prepare small quantities of baked goods from various ingredients.
For greater convenience and shelf stability, dry mixes for baked goods have long been available. The consumer mixes the dry mix with liquid ingredients such as water, milk, oil and/or eggs to form a batter. The batter is then immediately poured into a baking pan and baked to form the finished baked goods.
Useful developments in the formulation of dry mixes for baked goods continue to be made. For example, an improved dry mix for brownies is disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 08/929,827 filed Sep. 15, 1997 by Palmer et al entitled "Dry Mix for Baked Goods with Gellan Gum and Method of Preparation" (which is incorporated herein by reference). The dry mixes for brownies disclosed therein include gellan gum in addition to other ingredients. The dry mixes not only are useful for preparing low fat, high quality finished baked goods by consumers for home use, but also can be used for the large scale production of finished baked goods suitable for refrigerated sales and distribution. While the formulation for the dry mix is improved, the dry mixes are packaged in a conventional manner in a sealed bag placed in a conventional carton.
While dry mixes for home use are convenient, current trends for consumer package food products favor products of even greater convenience. The present invention provides improved products of greater convenience. The present invention provides articles comprising ready-to-bake batters that are shelf stable and can be stored at room temperatures for extended periods of time.
Refrigerated ready-to-bake batters having relatively short shelf lives are also known. One concern with such products is bacterial growth. A second problem resides in providing a leavening system that retains functionality over extended storage. Acidifying the batter desirably extends bacterial stability. However, the acidity undesirably tends to interact with the leavening system. With poor leavening, the finished baked goods exhibit undesirable volume and poor texture.
The present invention provides ready-to-bake batters for finished baked goods that are stable even at room temperature. The present articles thus provide the benefits combination of shelf stability of conventional dry mixes with the greater convenience of ready-to-bake batters.
Shelf stable batters for finished baked articles are commercially available, for example, in France made as described in EP 868,850 A published Oct. 7, 1998. Such articles comprise an impermeable flexible membrane pouch containing a batter comprising a CO.sub.2 gas producing leavening system and an inert gas atmosphere.
The present invention resides in part in the surprising discovery that a CO.sub.2 gas producing leavening agent is not an essential ingredient in the present packaged ready-to-bake batters.
The present invention provides improvements in those articles described in U.S. Ser. No. 09/322,208 (filed May 28, 1999) entitled "Shelf Stable Brownie Batter Article and Method of Preparation" which is incorporated herein by reference. The improvement resides in important part in the surprising discovery that expanded finished baked goods such as layer cakes, quick breads, muffins, pancakes, etc, can be provided from shelf stable batters articles even though such batter articles are substantially free of conventional CO.sub.2 gas producing leavening agents.